An access point (AP) may provide networking capabilities to user equipment (UEs) connected thereto. To increase the coverage area provided to the UEs, a plurality of APs may be linked together to form a local access network (LAN) such that different ones of the APs service different areas to extend the coverage area of the network. The plurality of APs may be connected using various network topologies. These topologies may be divided into infrastructure networks and ad-hoc networks. In ad-hoc networks, the APs may not be supported by centralized infrastructure, but rather communicate directly with other APs in the network.
Mesh networks are a type of ad-hoc network topology in which the APs cooperate to distribute data within the network. The data may be distributed from a source AP to a destination AP using routing techniques which propagate the data along a path by hopping from node-to-node until the destination is reached. A source UE, wishing to send data to a destination UE, may send the data to its associated source AP and the data may propagate over the mesh network between interfaces that interconnect various APs between the source AP and a destination AP associated with the destination UE.
Conventionally, APs within a mesh network utilize a single interface associated with an access technology to communicate therebetween. Therefore, these conventional mesh networks may be limited to the particular performance characteristics, capabilities and capacity/range tradeoffs of the shared access technology. For example, if the interfaces of the APs utilize a wireless access technology (e.g. 802.11 or Bluetooth) as their shared access technology to communicate therebetween, the network capacity associated with the wireless technology is shared among all the APs, which may lead to an increase in interference, latency and/or packet loss.